Hard Rain

by Waverly Fitzgerald

  “Rachel, darling,” she said. “To what do I owe this honor?” Her voice sounded a bit blurry around the edges. It’s one of the reasons I prefer to meet her for brunch. I like to talk to her before she starts drinking.

  “I need to talk to you,” I said.

  “Is something wrong?” I heard a bit of delight in her voice. Silvia likes crises and I rarely share my troubles with her.

  “I want to talk to you about dad.”

  “Oh.” Silvia’s voice fell flat, then lifted again. “Is he in trouble?”

  “Not at the moment,” I said. “Is it OK if I come over? Are you going to be home for a while?” Silvia sounded disappointed at the news that my dad was not in trouble but agreed to see me. “But the caterers are coming at three PM to set up for the party, so I’ve only got about a half hour to spare,” she said.

  Just as I was going out the door, my office phone rang. It was Matt Rossiter, the guy who trained me. He’s an old-fashioned kind of PI; his specialties include intimidating witnesses, tailing cars and using his fists. Still, we make a good team when we work together and we help each other out from time to time.

  “What’s up, Matt?” I could tell from his voice that something was wrong. He sounded shaken.

  “Got a minute?” he asked.

  “That’s about all I’ve got,” I said, “I’m on my way out the door. I’ve got an appointment.”

  “With another lovelorn female?” he asked. Matt thought my work was frivolous.

  “This case is a bit more serious,” I said. “I’m doing some background research on a student radical from the Sixties.”

  “That’s funny,” he said. “Mine has a Sixties connection too.”

  I waited for more details. I could hear static on the line and pondered my dad’s conspiracy theories again. Just as I was about to remind Matt that I was in a hurry, he spoke up. “They found a body in Greenwood Memorial Park in Renton, lying on top of Jimi Hendrix’s grave. It was my old Sergeant: Jack Rivers. I think I might have told you about him.” Matt rarely talked about his time in Vietnam but I knew enough to know that he hated his Sergeant.

  I made an encouraging noise.

  “He was murdered—you’ll probably hear about it on the news.” Matt paused again. “When I got home there was a note on my door. It was a platoon list, with the names of all the guys in my platoon. There was a check mark next to Rivers’s name. And another one next to mine.”

  “Creepy.”

  “I don’t know what it means but I want to get in touch with the other guys. See if anyone else got these notes.”

  Or if anyone else had been murdered. That was the unspoken thought we both shared during a minute of silence.

  “You sure manage to fall into a lot of these life and death situations,” I said. “Ever wonder why?”

  “Clean living, I suppose.”

  “Sure.” The truth is Matt is a danger junkie. He wouldn’t be happy sitting at a desk. He needs to be out in the mean streets, matching wits with dangerous criminals. I prefer my line of work. No real danger, just heartbreak and disappointment when I tell my client her new love is married. “Fax me the names and whatever else you’ve got. I’ll start digging as soon as I get back.”

  “You know Í don’t have a fax machine. Let me give you a couple of the names off the list and I’ll fax the whole list later.”

  “Okay.” I scribbled down the names as he read them. Jack Rivers. Henry Baker. Luther Brown. James Smith. Michael Maloney. “Some of these names are pretty common. It could be hard to identify these individuals. I’d have to be a magician to find them.”

  “Yeah, you are,” he said. “An hour on that computer of yours and you’ll find more than I could get in a week of leg work.”

  “You could do it too,” I said. “If you ever took the time to learn.” I had offered to teach him but he always turned me down. “This is the Computer Age, Matt, you need—”

  “That’s why I hire you. I do my thing, you do yours.”

  “OK.” I cut him off. This argument never went anywhere. “Take care. I’ll be in touch.”

  I was still thinking about my conversation with Matt as I climbed into my red Jeep and headed down the hill. The last time we had this conversation he told me he would buy a computer and learn to use it, if I would buy a gun and learn to use it. I told him “No way.” The very thought of owning a gun seemed wrong.

  Although we live only about a mile apart, my mother and I live in different worlds. I live with my two ferrets, in a one-bedroom condo on the top of Capitol Hill, a dense and diverse neighborhood in the heart of Seattle, while my mother and stepfather rattle around in an eight-bedroom mansion in Broadmoor, a gated community in the Madison Valley. The only entry is through a gatehouse manned twenty-four hours a day by a uniformed guard. The winding streets are designed to baffle an intruder and I still get lost sometimes. It took me years to learn the landmarks: turn right at the Southern plantation house, turn left when you see the topiary shaped like a swan, turn right after the wishing well.

  My stepfather owns one of the most imposing homes in this expensive enclave: a pseudo-French chateau with grey stone walls, sloping blue roofs and a turret with a conical roof. Privet hedges define the edges of the lawn and a curving driveway leads up to a three car garage. On this particular afternoon, the driveway was clogged with vans, all bearing the logo of a catering company.

  I squeezed my Jeep in behind them and followed the caterers, who were unloading trays from the backs of the vans, through the open front door and into the kitchen which was buzzing with activity. Several young people dressed in the ubiquitous black uniform of servers were arranging crackers on silver trays and stocking the massive sub-zero refrigerator with bottles of champagne. I went on through to the dining room where I found Jill, my mother’s assistant, plucking at a vase full of green tropical flowers, accented with banana leaves.

  “Hi, Rachel, your mom is out on the terrace,” Jill said.

  Through the arched plate glass windows, I spotted my mother sitting at a glass-topped table, with a champagne glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other. She was gazing out over the terrace and the formal garden and the sloping lawn to the sparkling blue waters of Union Bay, dotted with the white triangles of sailboats.

  “Hello, Silvia,” I said as I came up behind her. I had been instructed to call my parents by their first names ever since childhood and it no longer seemed unusual.

  “Rachel, darling!” Silvia held up her cheek for a kiss. She had adopted the European custom of double kisses after her first trip to Europe and now turned her face to accept my homage, her eyelids closed with pleasure.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  Silvia sighed. “It’s a fundraiser for Robb’s mayoral campaign.” Silvia loves the strategy and frenzy of a good campaign. She had been on the School Board for many years. “I don’t know what we’re going to do about the bees. Jill thinks we can burn citronella candles on the tables but I’m not sure that will work.”

  Silvia was wearing a peach-colored silk tank top and a short white denim skirt which showed off her long, tanned legs. She wore her dark hair pulled back into a ponytail and she certainly didn’t look like she was about to turn fifty-five, thanks to her devotion to her trainer and her Olympic-sized indoor pool. Strangers seeing us together often thought we were sisters, a compliment which thrilled Silvia but always made me feel terrible.

  Ross is her third husband, a former county sheriff, a law and order candidate, and a Republican running against the incumbent, a developer who was blamed for the violence that occurred during the WTO protests in 1999. I considered Ross a colossal jerk. I was especially contemptuous of the way he spelled his first name with two Bs.

  Silvia waved her champagne glass at me. “Do you want some champagne?”

  “No, Silvia. You know I don’t drink.” I had gotten sober five years earlier after a serious drinking career during which I made some bad choices. But I think my mo
ther still cherishes the hope I will start drinking again. Then she wouldn’t have to question her choice to stay almost permanently lubricated.

  Silvia took a puff off her cigarette and blew out the smoke impatiently. “So what’s this about your father?” she asked.

  I decided to cut to the chase. “How come I didn’t know he was a defense attorney?”

  Silvia shrugged. “It wasn’t a big secret. I guess you were just too young to remember.”

  “Why did he stop?”

  Silvia’s eyes clouded. “It was getting dangerous. He was being followed, harassed. The wrong sorts of people were coming around. I was afraid ….” Her voice trailed off. She stubbed out her cigarette.

  “So when was this?”

  “You were six, I think,” she said. That would make it around 1975.

  “Do you remember the name Ellie Foley?”

  It was as if I had slapped her. Silvia dropped her glass and it shattered, the champagne pouring down the glass-topped table and into her lap. She jumped to her feet.

  “Don’t ever mention that name again!” she said.

  “But what is it? What’s wrong?”

  Silvia was already summoning help from the house, waving her hands. Jill headed towards us with a towel in her hand.

  “That woman pretended to be my best friend but all she wanted was your father.”

  Jill had arrived at the table and was sponging at Silvia’s silk blouse.

  “Go get me another pack,” Silvia snapped, grabbing the towel away from Jill. Her pack of Salem Lights was sitting in a puddle of champagne. Jill took off for the house.

  Silvia turned to me. “I will never forgive her for what she did. And you shouldn’t either. I know you’ve always blamed me for the divorce. But you should blame that woman. She’s the one that broke up our family.”

  Chapter 3

  Silvia Stern, 1966-1968

  Ellie Foley. Ellie Foley. Marty tossed her name into every conversation as lovers do in the throes of infatuation. Ellie Foley was speaking at the Husky Union on the anti-war movement. Ellie Foley was leading a march to protest police harassment on Hippie Hill. Ellie Foley had invited the Chicago Seven to speak in Red Square.

  Silvia, stuck all day in a tiny apartment with an infant while Marty was gone all day at class, was prepared to hate Ellie Foley. And on first sight, she did.

  It had been an exhausting day. A long walk to and from the grocery store in the rain with a grumpy toddler. Silvia started cooking the spaghetti sauce as soon as they got back. But then Susan woke up from her nap wailing and while she was trying to calm her, the sauce burned. Silvia had to start over, worried that Marty would be disappointed if his dinner wasn’t ready. But the spaghetti was done and Marty still hadn’t called by eight PM. By then Silvia had drunk two glasses of wine. She fell asleep putting Susan down. She woke up to the sound of voices in her dining room, the clink of glasses, the whiff of cigarette smoke and weed.

  She recognized the sounds and smells—Marty often brought people home with him to talk politics and Silvia loved the company. Besides they always raved about her cooking. She got to her feet, straightened her rumpled dress and headed out into the dining room. She recognized a few of the faces—some of Marty’s fellow law students—but in their midst was a woman, a gorgeous redhead with creamy skin and auburn hair that fanned over her shoulders in a smooth rippling sheet of liquid fire. She wore a short denim skirt and knee high brown boots that showcased her long legs. Silvia knew, even before Marty introduced her, that this must be Ellie Foley. Her face was not extraordinary—hazel eyes outlined with black eyeliner, a sprinkling of freckles, a snub nose—but she had a vivacity that lit her up from the inside. You couldn’t help but be drawn to her flame.

  Silvia tried to stay on the outskirts, out of Ellie’s magnetic pull, bringing in the spaghetti, emptying ashtrays, but she couldn’t resist, especially not after Ellie insisted she sit down and join the conversation. “Let the guys wait on us,” she said. Ellie lit up another joint, and passed it to Silvia. Silvia didn’t really like smoking dope—she preferred the high she got from wine—but she took a deep hit and passed it to the guy on her left.

  The conversation surged around her. Gus had taken a mock-up of his underground newspaper to a printer who refused to print it, saying that it was treasonous to question the war in Vietnam. Marty thought that was illegal. They tossed around ways to get the paper printed. Someone knew a guy who worked at Boeing who had a printing press in his basement and might let them use it.

  Susan woke up crying around two AM and Silvia went in to sing to her. Ellie went with her and sat on the bed smoking, while Silvia sang a song her mother had sung to her.

  “You’ve got such a beautiful voice,” Ellie said, after Susan had fallen back to sleep. “You should be a singer.”

  Silvia found herself telling Ellie all about how that was her dream. How she grew up listening to the Met. How she met Marty in a jazz club. But she had given up her dream of performing when she became a mother.

  Ellie thought that was sad. “Say you should join the women’s group I’m starting,” she said. “We meet every Tuesday at my house.”

  Ellie lived in a rundown duplex in the Wallingford district with two guys. One was a returning vet with a bushy beard and piercing blue eyes. His nickname was Boo and Silvia could see why. He was scary. The other guy, Bob Roth, was a skinny Poli Sci major who used a pick to tease his curly hair in a huge Afro. Silvia could never figure out if one or both of them were sleeping with Ellie. Ellie kicked them both out of the house when the women met. She said she was creating “woman-only” space.

  The place was a mess. The kitchen sink was always full of dirty dishes and the whole house smelled like rotting vegetables. Ellie said they got most of their food out of the dumpsters in back of the local Safeway. She refused to buy anything from inside the store because Safeway bought grapes from non-union workers. Silvia had to brace herself before sitting down on the plaid sofa covered with crumbs and pocked with cigarette burns.

  They gathered around the coffee table in the living room where an American flag was nailed to the wall upside down. Ellie said that was a distress signal. Ellie passed out wine coolers and they went around in a circle and talked about whatever theme Ellie had chosen for the week. Ostensibly it was a leaderless group but Ellie dominated and often swayed the discussion towards her point of view.

  The other women were younger than Silvia but in some ways they seemed older. They had thrown off the shackles of convention, along with their bras. They had more sexual experience (Silvia had only been with Marty) and they had opinions which they voiced with enthusiasm.

  One week they talked about abortion. Two of the women described their experiences ending unwanted pregnancies. Franny had flown to Japan for an abortion; Stella had used an herbal remedy which had almost killed her. Silvia was shocked. Although she no longer went to Mass, Silvia believed abortion was murder. She told them about the first time she felt the baby who would become Susan flutter in her womb. The other women, none of whom had children, seemed unmoved. They told Silvia she would change her mind when she found it expedient.

  Another week Ellie directed them to provide personal examples of male oppression. Silvia had a long litany of grievances, all directed against Marty, and the other women encouraged her to stand up against him. He should be doing an equal share of child care, food preparation, dish washing and laundry.

  “But he’s the one bringing in the money,” Silvia protested, although it wasn’t much: a meager scholarship, a student loan and a stipend for his work as a T.A. They were sacrificing now so he could earn more money later.

  “Why shouldn’t you?” asked Karen. She was a petite woman with mousy brown hair, thick glasses and a baby voice. “You could have a career too.”

  “But who would take care of the kids?” Silvia asked.

  That led to a heated discussion about the lack of child care and the implicit discrimination against mothers
(and thus women). Ellie waxed eloquent. “It’s not just Silvia. Think of our black sisters. If they had someone to watch their kids, they could be out working for the people.”

  By the end of the evening, Silvia had promised to start a committee to explore options for child care, an initiative which eventually led to the forming of a cooperative day care in the basement of a church in the University District where Silvia left her kids while she went back to school to get a Master’s degree in Education.

  At first, all the topics were personal but gradually Ellie began introducing more politics into the mix, as she got more involved with SDS. When Bernadine Dohrn, one of the national leaders of SDS came to Seattle, Ellie invited her to address the group. It was more of a harangue. Bernadine evidently thought they should be more disciplined, more focused on the goal of changing the society. She called them a “coffee klatch.”

  After that, they named their group the Amazons. Ellie said they were an ancient tribe of women who cut off one breast to better carry their weapons. In their modern version, they ran through campus, naked from the waist up, their faces smeared with paint, and spray-painted slogans on walls or smashed windows. They were a secret society. They didn’t reveal their identities to anyone outside the group. Silvia loved having a secret from Marty who was so self-righteous about his growing involvement in SDS.

  The Amazons psyched themselves up by smoking joints and drinking wine. They crowded into the tiny bathroom in Ellie’s house to paint each other’s faces. Then after a planning session, in which Ellie would reveal their objective and rehearse them in carrying out their planned objectives, they drove over to campus, stripped to the waist, armed themselves with spray paint cans and emerged from the back of the van, screaming and shrieking as they ran. After an action, they scattered, washed off their paint, then regrouped at one of the local hangouts, like the Last Exit on Brooklyn, shaking with excitement.